I am pleased to announce that this year's Bulldog High School Academic Tournament (BHSAT XXI) will take place on March 24, 2012 at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. BHSAT annually features a number of top teams from around the country - last year's tournament featured both the eventual HSNCT/NSC champion State College (PA) and the runner-up Hunter College High School (NY) - as well as plenty of local and regional competitors across the spectrum.

As is traditional, the set for BHSAT XXI will be house-written by members of the Yale University quizbowl team. I (Matt Jackson) will be serving as the head editor of the set. In this role, I will continue to build on the increased quality and the often-entertaining nature of the 2011 BHSAT set. Question difficulty will be suitable for teams preparing for national tournaments later on in the year or for those seeking a moderately challenging tournament; since last year's difficulty hit this standard well, expect the questions to be of the same difficulty as BHSAT 2011, with performance during the year on regular NAQT and HSAPQ sets correlating strongly with performance on this set. No tossup in BHSAT will go past the sixth line of question text (using 10 point Times New Roman as the standard), and no bonus part will exceed two lines of text.

As we've done for the past two years, Yale will also be seeking to establish "mirror sites," or other tournaments using the BHSAT set, where appropriate. The set will be available for use at other sites from the weekend of March 24th until the weekend of May 19th (i.e. the weekend just prior to the 2012 NAQT High School National Championship in Atlanta, Georgia.) If you are interested in mirroring BHSAT, please email me at matthew.jackson@yale.edu. Take a look at the thread in the Mirror Requests forum for a complete list of sites using the set.

Fee information, a running field, and the tournament location (when determined) will be available in a post below this one from our Tournament Director and club president, John Lawrence. Register not by emailing me, but by emailing John Lawrence at john.lawrence@yale.edu.

We hope to see you in New Haven on March 24th for the premier quizbowl tournament of the spring semester!

Registration will begin at 8:30 AM with the first round beginning by 9:30 AM. We are hoping to run this in William L. Harkness at hall as usual (I will confirm this, once I am sure). Fees and registration information for the tournament are as follows:

Base fee: $90 Working buzzer system: -$5 each Moderator: -$5 each Additional teams: -$5 each Travel discount: -$10 for travelling over 200 miles to get to usMinimum fee per team: $60

Out of curiosity concerning some teams listed in your current field: Is the Central Catholic team listed there the Detroit Central Catholic squad, or is it a different team? Further, is the Northmont team the one from Ohio, the one with the very gifted young Sam Blizzard on its roster, or is this not that Northmont squad?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that SJHS is tentatively interested in bringing two teams. I just need to talk to my kids, since March is a busy, busy month.

Edward Powers wrote:Out of curiosity concerning some teams listed in your current field: Is the Central Catholic team listed there the Detroit Central Catholic squad, or is it a different team? Further, is the Northmont team the one from Ohio, the one with the very gifted young Sam Blizzard on its roster, or is this not that Northmont squad?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that SJHS is tentatively interested in bringing two teams. I just need to talk to my kids, since March is a busy, busy month.

I'm not sure about those two, but I've heard Schindler is just some kid from a state bordering the Mississippi River.

Thanks Ryan. But if you are correct about "Schindler", he is not simply just ANY kid from a midwestern state. Unless my deduction here from your supposition is wrong, he is most likely a certain kid many consider one of the best players in the country.

If in fact this is correct, then the "Schindler" team at BHSAT will be very dangerous even with only one player, for this specific player is the very best player on arguably one of the best teams in the country, and he is surely one of the finest players in the United States, easily a Top 10-25 calibre player in the entire country, possibly even better. So, it will be interesting to see how he performs alone in that field, especially if the two teams I asked about are in fact the teams I think they might quite possibly be. Then throw in LASA & Hunter if they fully commit, and suddenly you have a very, very competitive field. I do not know much about the other teams currently listed in the field, but any field with Hunter, LASA, DCC and Northmont of Ohio is already quite formidable, and if "Schindler" is what we think it is, then this adds to the overall quality of an already impressive potential field.

I am the Schindler of whom you speak, but it'd be great if future posts regarding me did not mention the name of a certain school I may attend due to a certain statewide organization in a certain state abutting the Mississippi river.

I already told Matt this at Prison Bowl, but I think it is worth noting that no Westchester teams will be at this tournament, as Westchester's largest event is this day, and even the most fervent supporters of good quizbowl among us I am pretty sure feel bound to attend this, the Omar Q Beckins invitational...(for what it's worth, we did try to have the Omar moved, to no success)

EDIT: as Ryan just said, this was just changed, and a more minor event is now scheduled on this day, so Westchester teams may show up to BHSAT

SrgtDonow wrote:I already told Matt this at Prison Bowl, but I think it is worth noting that no Westchester teams will be at this tournament, as Westchester's largest event is this day, and even the most fervent supporters of good quizbowl among us I am pretty sure feel bound to attend this, the Omar Q Beckins invitational...(for what it's worth, we did try to have the Omar moved, to no success)

This got changed today, thankfully. There's still a small conflict, but nothing major, so there will likely be some Westchester presence.

Unfortunately Saint Joseph's must withdraw from the tournament, since 6 of my top 8 players will be at a Youth in Government Conference in Trenton that weekend and I just learned about this conflict. Naturally, we hope the tournament is a great success, and we are sorry we cannot not be there.

Irvington will not be attending, the team has been doing a lot of travelling recently, so the general consensus of the team is to stay in Westchester instead of making the trip to this. We never signed up, but I just wanted to confirm that the interest we kind of sort of expressed will not amount to anything,

This may be the most bimodal field in history. Any thought of doing a very quick rd of prelims to separate Schindler, Northmont, and Hunter from everyone else? Ridgewood may be here; not yet sure, but we'll sort it out this week. Is there a final deadline?

David MaddenRidgewood (NJ) '99, Princeton '03Founder and Director: International History Bee and Bowl, National History Bee and Bowl, International History Olympiad, United States Geography Olympiad, National Sports and Entertainment History Bee, US History Bee, National Citizenship Bee, et al.Adviser and former head coach for Team USA at the International Geography Olympiad

nationalhistorybeeandbowl wrote:This may be the most bimodal field in history. Any thought of doing a very quick rd of prelims to separate Schindler, Northmont, and Hunter from everyone else? Ridgewood may be here; not yet sure, but we'll sort it out this week. Is there a final deadline?

The bracketing will depend on the final number of teams we're working with, but we're planning on running enough prelim rounds such that at least two teams from each bracket advance to the playoffs. BHSAT traditionally has had a good mix of teams of all skill levels, and from what I've heard from teams, that has always been part of the fun of the experience.

Hope Ridgewood can make it. The tentative final deadline for registration is March 21st by 9 PM EST.

John LawrenceYale University '12King's College London '13University of Chicago '18 or '19

“I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.” - G.K. Chesterton

Ridgewood will go to this with 1 team for now and 2 buzzers. There may be more buzzers and teams to come; I will know more by tomorrow evening and post accordingly. Also, do you need more buzzers? I can make sure you'll be fine, but if you're fine already, let me know.

David MaddenRidgewood (NJ) '99, Princeton '03Founder and Director: International History Bee and Bowl, National History Bee and Bowl, International History Olympiad, United States Geography Olympiad, National Sports and Entertainment History Bee, US History Bee, National Citizenship Bee, et al.Adviser and former head coach for Team USA at the International Geography Olympiad

Actually, I was going to post to the effect of requesting buzzers soon. Yale has only one functional buzzer at this point, so all other buzzers need to come from outside. Can any other teams bring buzzers? (Hunter? Kellenberg?)

John LawrenceYale University '12King's College London '13University of Chicago '18 or '19

“I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.” - G.K. Chesterton

Put Ridgewood down for 3 teams and 3 buzzers. I will do what I can to get you more, but it looks like some of my NHBB sets will need to go to Northern PA on Saturday too.

David MaddenRidgewood (NJ) '99, Princeton '03Founder and Director: International History Bee and Bowl, National History Bee and Bowl, International History Olympiad, United States Geography Olympiad, National Sports and Entertainment History Bee, US History Bee, National Citizenship Bee, et al.Adviser and former head coach for Team USA at the International Geography Olympiad

As the previous posts summarize, Hunter A (York, Richard, Matthew) defeated Schindler in a pendulous two-game final to win this year's BHSAT. Congratulations to Hunter A for their third BHSAT victory in a row, and to Max for absolutely shattering all previous Yale-tournament scoring records while being a great sport all day.

Thanks to Jon Pinyan of Bergen and Christina DeAngelis of Suffield for volunteering to staff all day. A million thanks to Jeff Hoppes, who let us know he could make it to staff only a few short days ago, but managed to give thorough editorial comments on several categories of the set as it was being finalized and provided a laptop along with many scoresheets just when we needed them. Jeff also volunteered to help proofread huge swaths of the set with us, catching dozens of little mishaps in the span of a few hours. I also want to give a public special thanks to Matt Bollinger; though he wasn't at this tournament, Mattb was a huge help as a sounding-board for question ideas, playtesting, and difficulty-gauging, often giving very helpful advice with little to no advance notice at whatever random times I happened to be working on questions over these past few months.

Combined stats should be available soon; in the meantime, separate prelim and playoff stats should be available at the srivatsa.org link in Ashvin's post above. Corrections to stats, if they are necessary, should be emailed to Ashvin at ashvin.srivatsa@yale.edu rather than being posted here.

The BHSAT set will be undergoing a round of corrections, revisions, and rereadings before its use at future sites. I have been compiling what I believe to be a full list of issues across all the packets; if you have any issues you want to make sure we address, particularly if any factual errors escaped our notice, please email matthew.jackson@yale.edu and I will do what is needed to address those concerns.

Just a quick thanks to Matt and the entire crew at Y for a smooth tournament and a great day. Certainly we have come to expect a very high level of excellence in the content at Bulldog, and this tournament lived up to those expectations. But more than that, there is a special art to keeping all the pieces running gracefully - which rarely comes out looking like art. It did yesterday and we had another fantastic visit to New Haven. Hats off to Max - it looked like you had our number and we were lucky to get momentum back from you.

Coach Stephen C YoungFaculty Advisor for Hunter College High School Quiz Bowl

Combined statistics, as well as prelim and playoff statistics, are available on the TDB now: http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/66. Please ignore the fourth report, titled "Playoffs + Finals (Rounds 8-13)"; it does not work, and remains there only as an example of a bug which I have reported to the developer of the TDB.

Any errors in these statistics should be sent to me via PM on the forums or via email (ashvin.srivatsa@yale.edu); I will apply all corrections I have received as a batch in one or two weeks.

With the help of our new Chief Admin, a private discussion usergroup has been established for BHSAT. To join, go to the User Control Panel up top, then click the "Usergroups" tab, then scroll to "BHSAT 2012 discussion." Once you've hit the select button there, scroll down to where it says "Join selected" and hit Submit, at which point I can approve you if and only if I'm sure you've actually experienced the set.

BHSAT will be cleared for public discussion at the conclusion of the last mirror, which at this point appears to be slated for May 19th. As a reminder, do not discuss question specifics outside the usergroup until then.